Andy Sloan: Life PLE (Post Law Experience)

A VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE: PLE + 1 month

At the end of June 2007, we spoke to Andy Sloan about his impending career change.  You can read his interview here.  We are now going to follow him as he re-trains, to give you an idea of the ups and downs encountered in starting from scratch away from law.  Here is Andy's first installment, written a month after leaving Lovells...

“So you’re off to live the dream?” As I awoke the morning after my leaving drinks, living the dream did little to combat a fearsome beating inside my skull. A flight to Switzerland four hours later did more to prompt action, if little to quell the queasiness.

And so my first two weeks of freedom were spent taking stock in the glorious surrounds of the Swiss Alps. The outdoors have always seemed more of a home to me than the concrete corridors of central London, hence my desire to have a job that involved more travel and time outside of an office than my previous role.

The jump into journalism had been a long time coming for me. To avoid lying through my teeth in an appraisal, I had given four months notice of my intentions. This enabled me plenty of time to work on the large list of things I needed to do before D-Day while winding down my workload. Sure enough, the sale of a large shopping centre by a key client put paid to the latter and impacted directly on the former.

Almost the only thing I did manage to achieve was an interview with Moretolaw on my proposed change of profession. During the course of this, we discussed the possibility of writing a blog monitoring my transition.

I had raised the fact with Moretolaw that it as all very well reading about people who had jumped ship and set up a dream ski chalet in the south of France, but the gap from conception to completion was still too large for most of us mere mortals to fathom, let alone follow.

I wanted to know exactly what difficulties they encountered, how much it cost them - literally, mentally and emotionally – and simply more, lots more, detail on the process, the path, so that I and others could gauge whether it really was a viable option for us. The interviews open our eyes but also our appetite for more information.

Each article on those who have succeeded in such projects has the usual advice to “do your research” and “carefully assess” whether such a project is right for you and/or the market. It is stressed that you be aware of, and prepared to make, the sacrifices required. It would be a lot simpler to us all in “carefully assessing” life’s alternatives if such articles were expanded upon and case studies were presented on our lap to mull over and discard or take up as is our want. After all, time is the one thing that people in the legal profession are short of – although I do recall a colleague once also muttering something about sanity.

I quite fancy running a ski chalet in the south of France but initial research into whether I can muster the finances, convince the other half and learn the lingo could take months. An insight into somebody else attempting this, as they are attempting it, thereby omitting the rose-tinted spectacles of post-launch satisfaction or the (no doubt inadvertent) condescending caveats of “the faint-hearted need not apply,” and, “it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, you couldn’t possibly hope to emulate it”, would be most helpful.   

Therefore, in guinea-pig fashion, it was resolved that my foray into the media world would be catalogued for the benefit of Moretolaw readers. I will therefore be writing a blog for Moretolaw, bleating of the pros and cons of the change from city lawyer to, hopefully, at some point, Fleet Street journalist. No doubt there may even be a noticeable improvement in the standard of the writing.

As emphasised by most that Moretolaw have featured, the key criteria for any change of profession, for the pursuit of any dream that lies outside of law, is handing in your notice. The key impact of this notification is a lack of income.

Once ‘released’ back into the wild as such, monetary pressures will determine the survival of said dream or a swift return to the legal profession or other temporary, yet regular, vocation.  For the first, initial, major difference is the lack of a certain day in the month when a small piece of paper passes across your desk containing some rather enjoyable figures.

My first month in the open has been a tough test of my financial estimates. Wedding and birthday invitations requiring long distance travel for short weekend jollies are significantly harder to justify. I tried to circumvent this at first by hitch-hiking, a jolly of its own were it not for the foul and record-breaking weather that rolled in while I stood on the roadside halfway up the A1.

Yet monetary concerns have been set-off against initial success in the quest for the experience that will see me to my goal. Find out next time how I have managed to line up working for Championship contenders Cardiff City FC and the Rugby World Cup Media Team.

And in the meantime, good luck with your own, personal, plotting.

For jobs in journalism and articles about getting into journalism, click here.

If you are also going through a career change and would like to catalogue it for the greater good, then please get in touch.

If you know any other ex-lawyers who have gone and done something interesting or unusual with their lives then please get in touch.

Back to:

OUT OF LAW

Send this feature to a friend